Botcon: It’s here! *sigh* Still can’t make it…

Botcon is a fickle thing for me. When I can afford it, I can never make it and when I can’t afford it I don’t go. Some fans have been kind enough to assist in hooking me up with stuff though and selling off some of the preciouses in my collection actually allowed me access to the finer things in collecting life, like the fancy foam-padded exclusives in their fancy artbox cases. They’re fancy.

This year is a year of mixed feelings and apprehension given the many revisited mistakes of Hasbro to date and the foul-ups of Fun Publications, Hasbro’s folks who handle the convention. Hasbro’s seemingly random ban on 3rd party goods with extremely vague references to approved goods was a bit of a dick move sparking rage and criticism from the fanbase while following that bad move with the WORST move of banning the sale of any “non-offical” artwork at the convention basically punishing any talented artists that dared to try and make this Texas visit a slightly profitable one.

Hasbro changed their tune about the artists, but from what I understand the 3rd party ban is still in play and I’m very curious to see who challenged Hasbro on this and what occurred.

Anyway, I literally just got my Runamuck today so I’m in a pretty good mood and feel I might as well report what little is gurgling back from Botcon. This year’s theme is revisiting the Convention exclusive spinoff series; Shattered Glass, the story of Heroic Decepticons battling Evil Autobots. In this particular chapter of the ongoing Shattered Glass tomfoolery the evil Autobots have made contact with evil, obscure Japanese Decepticons in our world and great peril awaits us all! Thankfully a few heroic Decepticons band together with Autobots of our world led and an equally obscure Japanese Autobot to save us all!

So, uh… yeah. That’s this years thing. Some repainted toys, some obscure characters, some changes in roles where Ultra Magnus, Tracks, Optimus Prime and Wreck-Gar are all VERY evil making things very confusing for folks on the sidelines. Worse still, now that they’ve crossed over into our world the Shattered Glass stuff will now proceed to go bonkers making the next 2-3 year potentially easy on Hasbro to repaint and re-sell stuff like mad citing dimension hopping doppelgangers.